These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

According to the Internet Archiveís Wayback Machine, forums.omnigroup.com went online back in April of 2006. I canít take credit for the idea; it was the brainchild of a guy named Scott. He subsequently headed down south to go work at a certain well-known fruit retailer with a Cupertino zip code. He got this community started, so the first thank you goes out to him.

The biggest thank you, though, goes out to everyone thatís posted here since then. Iíve spent a lot of time on these forums, and in that time, Iíve learned things, made friends, and met people that Iím proud to work with today. Because of these forums, our products are better, our company is stronger, and there is no hyperbole involved when I say that Iíve learned a few valuable life lessons that have made me better at my job and better as a person. All that time I spent was well worth it; I hope you feel the same.

When we selected the software that these forums are based on, it was the best package available. However, the web has come a long way since 2006. Even taking the technological advancements for granted, the idea of an internet community has evolved considerably. A lot of valuable (and sometimes painful) lessons have been learned. Running a place like this is still more art than science, but over the years a lot of progress has been made in figuring out how to foster a community that provides maximum benefit (and which minimizes harm to) the people that make it up.

Alongside the public test process for OmniFocus 2 for Mac, weíve been testing a software package called Discourse. Itís an open-source discussion platform that is trying to bake the lessons I referred to above right into the software layer. It has more modern tools for post creation, image hosting, and editing. It gives the community tools that help to ensure that the most valuable information gets elevated and gets the most visibility. Moderators are still part of the forum community, but it also gives you more control, responsibility, and options for self-determination than the current forum software does.

Thereís a lot of really smart thinking behind Discourse; the test has gone so well weíve decided to retire this software package and to move our community over to it. At the same time, there is a crapton of valuable history and information on these forums; we donít want that to go anywhere. These forums arenít going to disappear, but the ability to make new accounts and to make new posts have both been shut off.

Iíd like to invite everyone reading this to head over to http://discourse.omnigroup.com and set up an account there. I think youíll find that the effort of setting up a new account is more than worth it.

The only thing better than what we accomplished here is what I think we can accomplish when we give those same group of people a much better toolset with which to express themselves to each other. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

tldr: Weíre moving our forums to a new and much-improved software package. All the content here will be preserved so the information isnít lost, but account creation and the ability to create new posts have both been disabled. Please head over to discourse.omnigroup.com and create an account there to join our community. Thanks!